Honors Peer Mentor Guide An Honors Creative Project (HONRS 499) by Amanda Garlock Thesis Advisor Dr. Laurie Lindberg Ball State University Muncie, Indiana May 2009 Graduation Date: May 2009 l l.r' : Abstract The following guide is the culmination of a semester long project that will be used for the Honors 100 peer mentoring program. It comprises seven sections, each with its own introduction. The sections are as follows: Mentoring, Syllabus, Activities, The Book, 4-Year Plan, BStJ Life, and Muncie. Each of these sections is used in class discussion for the Honors 100 program. Some sections include handouts that can be easily printed for the freshman students in the class. This guide is a revision of the previous, but the goal is to have a binder that is more accessible for Honors Peer Mentors that speaks directly of the goals of the program and the opportunities that exist. The guide is also prefaced by an artist's statement that shows the research that was done about mentoring itself, as well as describes the changes and revisions made from the previous guide. Acknowledgements .:. I want to thank Dr. Laurie Lindberg for advising me through this project She helped me with the design and tone of the new guide. She also helped to edit everything and made sure that the guide was the absolute best it could be . •:. I also want to thank the Honors Advisers, John Dobelbower and Sarah Haley, for helping with the 4-Year Plan section of the guide. Their knowledge was invaluable, and helped to clarify many advising issues . •:. Thank you to the Peer Mentors past and present for sending me your advice, your own handouts, and your encouragement. Peer-to-Peer Mentoring in the University Setting This paper first gives a briefoverview ofthe definition andfunctions C?f mentoring. The second section explores the needs of undergraduate students, using literature about higher education processes. The third section describes how mentoring, especially peer-to-peer mentoring, can be used to meet this need. Finally, I describe the changes that I have made to the peer mentor guide for the Ball State University Honors College. What is Men/oring? The year before life as a freshman student at any university is a whirlwind of university visits, receptions, and orientations as universities actively recruit undergraduate students for their various institutions. With all of these activities enveloping freshmen-to-be, it's no wonder that many new undergraduate students feel out of place and out of touch with their new university life after their parents deposit them on the doorstep of their new residence hall. After all of the excitement of searching for the perfect college, the next four years loom ahead. What can be done to lengthen the orientation process for new freshmen? The answer that many undergraduate institutions are beginning to give is mentoring. The classical examples of mentoring are those of Plato and Socrates, or Freud and Jung, but mentoring is not so easily defined. In fact, definitions of mentoring range widely throughout the literature, and much of that literature is based on career-related mentoring, rather than academically-related mentoring. Because of this, the definition of mentoring that I will use is based in the business world but still fits the purpose of this paper: "We consider mentoring to be a dynamic, reciprocal relationship in a work environment between an advanced career incumbent (mentor) and a beginner (protege) aimed at promoting the career development of both" (Healy and Welchert 1990, p. 17). According to this definition, both mentor and protege are actually working toward a type of identity transformation: from mentor-protege to working colleagues. This works in a college environment as well as the business arena for both the traditional faculty-student mentoring relationship as well as a peer-to-peer relationship. In both cases, the protege is learning to fit into a new world in both an academic and a social sense. Just as there are many ways to define mentoring, research is varied as to the functions of mentoring. Most sources, however, agree that all of these functions can be put into one of two categories: functions that are career-enhancing, as opposed to those functions that are primarily psychosocial in purpose. In the first category, the mentor sponsors and coaches the protege, whereas in the second, the mentor provides psychological support, helping to confirm the identity of the protege (Olian, Carroll, Gcnnantonia, & Ferren 1988). Some of the other functions include these: acceptance and encouragement, advice or guidance, protection, information, help with access to resources, and the stimulation of knowledge acquisition (Jacobi 1991). We can see how all of these functions could be fit into an undergraduate mentoring program. Critics would point out that these functions could also be ascribed to teachers or supervisors, but I would argue that mentoring and teaching are separate activities with some overlapping goals. Mentoring can be formal, assigned by some sort of superior agency, or informal, with mentor and protege choosing one another without any guidance from above. Regardless, the tone of mentoring relationships is generally described as "informal. continuous, caring, and permits the exploration of a wide range of topics that interest and concern students" (DeCoster 1982, p. 6). This relaxed tone allows mentor and protege to have a comfortable yet productive relationship that differs greatly from the authoritative, academic tone of the classroom. Both members of the relationship have equal authority to choose their goals and tasks. Moreover, the stages of the mentor-protege relationship are different from those ofthe classroom. Healy and Weichert state that the mentor and protege begin their relationship in inequality and mutual admiration and end with a sense of "reciprocity between mentor and protege and accomplishment of an identity transformation by each party" (Healy and Weichert 1990, p. 18). This can be applied to a college peer-to-peer program, as the experienced student mentors the freshman student into a better knowledge of undergraduate life. Eventually, the students will need to see each other as colleagues of a sort, as opposed to knowledgeable and unknowledgeable. This is also different from the traditional classroom setting, since inquiry is directed by both parties as opposed to just the instructor, and therefore the stages of the relationship progress according to the pace set by the relationship (Healy and Welchert 1990). The need" of undergraduate students Universities have changed dramatically since their inception and so have the needs of their students. Males once studied the few accepted topics of theology, law, and medicine while conversing in the approved Latin in order to receive a degree, but no longer. Universities are no longer required to act in loco parentis, there are many more degree options, and colleges are now generally co-educational, among other shifts in the educational system. These changes are enough to make anyone feel lost, not just an average freshman student. To put it colloquially, "New students are like aliens traveling a foreign land who have no understanding of its mores and customs" (Ender and Strumpf 1984, p. 71). Strangers in a strange land, new students find themselves put into a system with which they are not used to coping. One of the necessities for new freshmen is community, and universities advertise their own brand of this with phrases such as "living-learning community" and the relabeling of traditional "dormitories" as "residence halls," a place for more than eating and sleeping, but also for making connections. And yet, how many freshmen actually know what a living-learning community is? Are universities really helping students to make the social connections that they require in order to have a successful undergraduate experience? According to Giddan (1988), this is questionable at best: Nowhere is the need for social support more vivid than in reactions of incoming college freshmen during the early months of school. Students may feel uncertain, anxious, even depressed and ineffective as they begin. They are in unfamiliar surroundings, unsure of their academic potential, their capacities for making friends, and their adjustment to the campus (p. 10). Freshmen need support at this time more than any other, especially as they begin to turn to their peers for the support that was provided by their families. New identities are confirmed through relationships and problems with peers. It is no wonder, then, that there is a call for more community and connections during the freshman experience. Freshmen also find themselves asking the question, "What should I do with my life?" University life asks them to choose a major and prepare for a job that we now know that they will probably not do forever. The responsibility for learning is now theirs, as opposed to the instructor's, as it was during secondary school. Classes could be anywhere from 25 to 300 students, and written work may be more challenging and in­ depth than they are used to: "Entering students may find they lack the necessary skills, motivation, ability, interest or time to cope with this new academic environment" (lJpcraft 1984, p. 14). The new challenges of university life may be too much to cope with effectively on their own. Academic support is needed in order for freshmen to feel secure in their new environment. In some cases, these new challenges may lead to dropout or distancing from the educational process; in others it may lead students to go into overdrive about educational responsibilities. "Entering students can become so obsessed with classroom success that they ignore other opportunities for rounding out their education. These students fail to develop themselves intellectually as well as academically" (Upcraft 1984, p.